Every year around the holidays, families gather to perform their rituals: cooking elaborate meals, gift-giving, and watching Charlie Brown specials.
Although the music of Charlie Brown is most closely associated with Christmas due to the overwhelming popularity of the 1965 classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” pianist Vince Guaraldi wrote great songs for each of the holiday specials. His jazz compositions spark a sense of joy and wonder, perfectly suited to the adventures (and misadventures) of the Peanuts gang.
“A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” is no exception. Guaraldi wrote one of the few Thanksgiving songs in the popular repertoire with the film’s main motif, aptly titled “Thanksgiving Theme.” It appears in four versions throughout the soundtrack, each with varying instrumentation from solo piano to electric piano trio with brass. It has a decidedly different sound from his Christmas music.
“By 1973, Guaraldi, a lifelong San Francisco native, had adapted to a funkier sonic palette, playing Wurlitzer, Fender Rhodes, and Clavinet as well as his trademark piano,” explains WRTI. “He had also stocked his band with musicians a good deal younger than he was, like the Oakland-based drummer Mike Clark, who was less than a year out from playing on Herbie Hancock’s ‘Thrust,’ as a member of the Headhunters. Joining them in the rhythm section was electric bassist Seward McCain, and filling out the horn section were Tom Harrell on trumpet and Chuck Bennett on trombone.”
Today, we’re featuring a performance of “Thanksgiving Theme” by pianist Isaiah J. Thompson, who puts the song back into a more traditional jazz instrumentation: trumpet, alto sax, tenor sax, double bass, piano, and drums. Thompson’s sextet members put their own mark on the music with solos.
Thompson’s arrangement doesn’t drastically alter the song, instead letting Guaraldi’s genius composition speak for itself. (He does give bassist Phillip Norris a workout by having him double the melody.)
Written in 3/4 time, the song plays with feel by accompanying the arpeggiated melody with dotted-quarter-note rhythms. This pattern of superimposing two beats underneath triple meter is an example of a hemiola.
“[A hemiola is] a musical figure in which two groups of three beats are replaced by three groups of two beats, giving the effect of a shift between triple and duple meter,” says AQA Education.
Thompson’s version of “Thanksgiving Theme” is taken from his 2023 album, “A Guaraldi Holiday.” Just like many of us, the shows – and especially their music – hold a special place in his heart.
“To this day, any time I hear ‘Christmas Time Is Here,’ ‘Thanksgiving Theme’ or ‘Linus and Lucy,’ I’m reminded how much Guaraldi’s music has shaped who I am today,” he says. “The holidays carry so many of my most precious memories and I can’t imagine them without Guaraldi. I want to pay tribute to him because for so many people I believe Vince Guaraldi may have been their introduction to great music and to jazz.”
Follow along with the sheet music for “Thanksgiving Theme”:
